I glanced to either side once more before stepping toward her. I stopped, still in full moonlight and waited for her to come to me. After a moment, she pushed herself away from the trunk and approached me with a confident stride.
“It’s been a long time, Gail. Are you alone?”
“Pretty much these days,” she said. “Yes, it has been a long time, but you can wipe that silly grin off your face, I didn’t call you out here just to try out the back seat of your truck.”
I chuckled but dropped the smile I hadn’t realized I had. “That’s too bad, but then I didn’t think you did. You sounded desperate for me to come tonight. I assume you’ve gotten yourself into a fix you can’t get out of without help. So what’s the problem?”
Gail stopped, still in shadows. She turned toward the cemetery and hesitated. After a moment, she turned back to me. “We’ve got a few minutes. Are you any good with that handgun?”
“Of course, I didn’t spend four years in the Army peeling potatoes,” I said.
“Good, cause as I remember it you couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn.”
I had to laugh, same ol’ Gail. “Just because you beat me on one dove hunt doesn’t mean I wasn’t pretty good.”
Then Gail laughed, too. “Yeah, that was a fun day. So, how’ve you been, Jesse?”
I gave a slight twist of my head. “Seriously? You practically beg me to meet you at a deserted church in the middle of the night and you want to know how I’ve been? What’s going on, Gail, why the drama?”
She stepped out of the oak’s shadow, moved close. The four inches difference in our heights didn’t allow us to stand entirely eye-to-eye, but close enough. Without thought, my hands rose to slide beneath her unbuttoned shirt and I clasped her bare waist beneath the dark material of her sports bra. She rose on tiptoes and kissed me lightly on the lips. The kiss was brief and she stepped back out of my hands before speaking. “Thanks for coming, Jesse. You’re right. I do need help.”
I stepped closer and gripped her shoulders lightly. Holding her at arm’s length, I studied her. My first guess about her hair had been wrong; she hadn’t cut it short. She had her thick dark hair tied up in a bun. Her right sleeve was rolled up to above her elbow and a bandage covered her forearm. There were dark spots on the white gauze, a sure sign of a fresh, seeping wound. At her left hip hung a long sheath, almost long enough for a machete and beneath her blouse, I could see a big bore autoloader peeking around her right side on a belt holster.
My eyes came back to her hazel ones. “What happened to your arm and why the weapons?”
“I’ll need the weapons and the arm is part of why I called you.” She pulled out of my hands and started walking away across the gravel parking lot. I followed. My longer strides kept me up with her, but she was moving too fast just to be ambling along. She was headed somewhere in a hurry.
“Are you going to tell me about it or are we going to play twenty questions?” I asked.
“I’ll tell you,” she said, but kept walking and didn’t elaborate.
“When?”
We crossed under the branches of one of the pecan trees and soon reached the cemetery. A weathered wrought-iron fence, a remnant of more prosperous times for Sardis, surrounded it. Gail stopped at the gate and held up a hand. I stopped beside her and we stared out across a grassy graveyard populated with more older tombstones than newer ones. “Listen,” she said softly.
I followed her gaze. I didn’t see anything worth noting, much less worth driving out here in the middle of the night.
I kept my voice as low as hers. “I don’t hear anything. Am I supposed to see a ghost? Is that it?”
“Shhhh,” Gail hissed and placed a hand on her pistol.
Somewhere in the dark, I heard scratching. It sounded almost like digging but not like with a shovel, no, it was more like a dog digging a hole. I felt a chill of premonition stand the hairs on my nape at attention. Moving slowly, I slid the Beretta out of my back pocket. With hushed tones, I said, “What is that?”
“A ghoul.”
“Say what?” I asked, figuring I must have misheard her.
“Come on, quiet now,” Gail said and stepped through the already open gate.
I hesitated, frowned, shook my head, and then hurried after her. She moved fast, darting from one headstone to another, always low, always alert. I mimicked her movements and a surge of adrenaline coursed through me. It was just like Afghanistan, following a teammate from cover to cover, always watching your mate’s back, always making sure that nothing popped out of cover to strike them from behind. Two tours had given me a knack for combat movement, something I was unlikely to forget and could never unlearn.
Gail dropped into a crouch in the short grass behind a large tombstone and froze. I copied her action, dropping to one knee within an arm’s reach of her. I swept the graveyard for a threat, but I didn’t follow my eyes with my weapon, that would mean movement and movement revealed positions. I had scanned nearly the entire half of the cemetery and the adjoining woods that were my responsibility—everything to Gail’s right—when I spotted movement almost straight ahead.
